Constructivism
Constructivism
The premise
- Learners construct their own understanding by reflecting on experience.
- They generate their own rules and mental models to make sense of things.
- Learning is a search for meaning and the adjusting of mental models to fit new experience.
The constructivist curriculum
- Customized to the learner’s prior knowledge.
- Built on hands-on problem solving.
What it asks of the educator
- Connect facts and foster new understanding.
- Tailor strategies to learner responses.
- Use open-ended questions and promote dialogue among learners.
Constructivism shares cognitivism’s interest in the mind but takes one more step. It says the learner does not just process knowledge handed to them; they build it. Understanding is constructed by the learner, out of their own reflection on their own experience. Two learners given the same lesson will construct slightly different understandings, because each builds from their own starting point.
The premise
Constructivism is founded on a clear premise: by reflecting on their experiences, people construct their own understanding of the world they live in. Each learner generates their own rules and mental models, and uses those models to make sense of new experience.
This gives a particular definition of learning. Learning is a search for meaning, and, more precisely, the process of adjusting one’s mental models to accommodate new experiences. When something new does not fit the model a learner already holds, the learner reworks the model. That reworking is the learning.
Learners build their own understanding by reflecting on experience
Each generates their own rules and mental models to make sense of the world. Learning is a search for meaning and the adjusting of those models to fit new experience.
The constructivist curriculum and teacher
Because understanding is built on what a learner already has, a constructivist curriculum is customized to the learner’s prior knowledge. It also leans heavily on hands-on problem solving, because learners construct understanding best by actively working through real problems rather than receiving finished answers.
This puts specific demands on the educator. A constructivist teacher is expected to:
- Make connections between facts and foster new understanding, rather than deliver facts in isolation.
- Tailor teaching strategies to how learners respond, adjusting in real time.
- Encourage learners to analyse, interpret information, and make predictions.
- Rely heavily on open-ended questions, which invite thinking rather than a single right answer.
- Promote extensive dialogue among learners, so understanding is built together.
The thread is activity and exchange. The teacher does not pour in conclusions; they set up the problems, ask the open questions, and keep the dialogue going while learners build understanding for themselves.
Use open-ended questions and promote dialogue among learners
They also connect facts to foster new understanding, tailor strategies to learner responses, and encourage learners to analyze, interpret, and predict, rather than deliver finished answers.
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